Sitting Pretty Page 2

  At that moment the doorbell rang. The mug nearly slipped out of my hand. Had I locked the door when I arrived? Oh God! Holding my breath, Talisker dug a claw in my thigh. I stifled a gasp and the bell rang again. Then, slowly at first, the handle started to rattle.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The most revolting smell woke me up, rotting fish with a hint of something else, wafting straight in my face. I tried to move but I was pinned down by a heavy weight on my chest. As I opened my eyes, Talisker yawned again.

  ‘Talisker! Eugh! I managed to turn my head in time to miss most of the toxic blast: last night’s Sheba and cat breath. ‘Stinky cat!’ I eased him, gently but firmly, off me and onto the floor. He seemed more surprised I wasn’t delighted by his morning greeting than offended by my slur against his personal hygiene. I couldn’t imagine Henry Halliday putting up with that. This is a man who pays a woman to come in and iron his tea towels.

  I sat up, stretching my arms above my head. The sofa I’d fallen asleep on had actually been more comfortable than our bed. I gritted my teeth; our bed. It was Alex’s bed now. As I tried to push the image out of my head, Talisker jumped back up on my lap.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, mister,’ I turned him round, so his face was away from me. ‘You may be gorgeous’ I rubbed his ears, ‘and you may be the cleanest cat in the world, but seriously, they could bottle your breath and use it for chemical warfare.’ He purred, so I knew I hadn’t offended him.

  After Eleanor, or whoever it was, had tried the door last night, I’d been too nervous to move about too much, in case a neighbour heard me and, knowing Henry to be away, brought it to Eleanor’s attention, or even called the police. I thanked my lucky stars that I must have automatically locked the door when I arrived. It’s a company rule that to keep the clients’ homes as secure as possible when we are looking after their pets, we lock doors on arrival. I must have been running on autopilot. And Eleanor must have assumed I’d just forgotten to drop the key back when I left. That would have to be sorted out when I went back later today in my proper role as professional cat sitter. As long as Davina gave me my job back.

  That was the plan I’d come up with to stay and carry on working while I saved up some money and decided what I wanted to do about all this. Henry Halliday was my most regular client. He was away on business for one entire week, every three weeks. That meant, if I didn’t manage to get myself caught, I could camp out in his cottage for the whole of every third week. I’d gotten away with it this time, hadn’t I? And that was without any kind of planning or forethought. It would be much easier next time, wouldn’t it? And I was sure there were plenty of other clients whose homes I could sleep in for the odd week, or weekend, or even just a night. Because one thing was certain – I was damned if I was going to leave the job I loved only to move back to London and stay with my mum just because Alex had decided marriage wasn’t for him after all. I would be the one to decide what happened next, thank you very much.

  My wages from Sitting Pretty, however, wouldn’t cover the rent of a new flat, even a tiny bedsit. And as for the upfront deposit? Forget it! Because Alex had always been a big spender and I’d preferred to pay my way, I’d not only stopped saving any money, but the little bit I’d previously saved had all but evaporated. I had plenty of zeros in my bank balance – it’s just that the decimal point was on the wrong side of them. There were always friends’ spare rooms and sofas where I could crash, but that would be too awkward. I didn’t want any of them knowing any more about Alex going to Dubai without me than they had to. I refused to be pitied as the girl whose husband had flown to Dubai without her and had ended their marriage with a phone call from the plane. That was not going to be me. I knew I’d have to give all of this a lot more thought later, but for now I wanted to keep what Alex had done to me to myself.

  That reminded me, I really needed to call my mum and somehow tell her the change of circumstances without worrying her and without actually telling any lies. I’d have to choose my words carefully. At least I knew Alex wouldn’t be calling her. They’d always been polite to each other for my sake, but they never really hit it off and neither had ever gone out of their way to start a conversation with the other. That should have told me a lot.

  I wondered if he’d at least call me to see that I was OK. Somehow I doubted it. If he’d been too chicken to tell me face to face, he’d be too chicken to call me again, knowing I’d had time to think up plenty to say back to him.

  ‘So,’ my fingers raked their way down Talisker’s back, ‘you’re probably ready for some breakfast.’ I got up and followed him to the utility room, where he looked up, expectantly, at the click-lock container of top quality cat biscuits. I tipped some into his bowl. He nudged my hand in thanks and dipped his head towards his breakfast, taking this extra meal as nothing more than his due for sharing the sofa with me last night.

  I was starving. Yesterday’s events had obliterated my appetite and food hadn’t even crossed my mind as I spent the evening being as quiet as possible.

  Once it had started to get dark, I’d moved myself into the cosy back room and pulled the curtains together, thankful for their thickness, the dense greenery at the bottom of the garden and the many trees on the common beyond that, which meant it would be safe to put a lamp on. I’d also pushed Henry’s carrier-bag holder, one of those sausage-shaped, cloth things you see at craft fairs, against the bottom of the front door just in case any light showed on the other side. Then I’d pretty much spent the evening huddled on the sofa in there with Talisker, my mind whirring, trying to make sense of what Alex had done to me.

  It was surreal. If you watched a trailer for a film where a husband dumped his wife the way Alex had dumped me, you’d think it was a bit silly and probably not worth watching.

  It was cruel. How could he let me give up a job he knew I loved, in the expectation of a move to another country, when he knew all along, he wasn’t taking me with him?

  It was bloody cowardly. Telling me over the phone. What did he think I’d do if he’d told me face to face? Hit him? He’s a foot taller and stronger than me. Scream and shout? He’s known me long enough to know I’m not the hysterical type. Or maybe he hasn’t. Was he afraid I’d try and talk him round? Make him change his mind and take me with him after all?

  My stomach grumbled. I had to have something to eat, then go straight to the Sitting Pretty office and get my job back. A quick look in the kitchen cupboards revealed nothing that didn’t require cooking, nothing I could eat and replace. Henry Halliday, it turned out, wasn’t a buyer of biscuits and snacks. The only breakfast cereal in the place was porridge – organic, of course. And there was no milk in the fridge anyway. Or yoghurt, or fruit or anything remotely edible. Not even a piece of obsessive-compulsively over-cling-filmed cheese. Just vacuum packed containers of fancy coffees and a row of expensive-looking jars, all their labels facing exactly the same way, containing black and green olives, and various pickled things – onions, beetroot, walnuts, and piccalilli – yuck!

  So breakfast would be another half pot of black tea. At least it would stop me being dehydrated from all the bouts of crying. Taking it with me, I tip-toed up the stairs and stopped, wondering which bathroom would be best for me to use for a quick shower. The washing machine would have to go on anyway for the towel I’d covered in mascara yesterday. I’d worked out that this could be done later when I, fingers crossed, came back to feed Talisker. If any nosy neighbour could hear the washing machine and cared enough to come and investigate, I could always say Talisker had knocked something over and I didn’t want to leave a mess for Mr Halliday to come back to.

  Because Sitting Pretty always had a lot of clients around these villages, I knew the layouts of probably most of the cottages. The en-suite bathroom for the guest bedroom at the back didn’t share an adjoining wall with the cottage next door, so it should be all right to use the shower in there. It was, of course, spotlessly clean but there were no toiletries in ther
e, and all mine were in the car. So I took a deep breath and ventured through Mr Halliday’s bedroom, hoping to borrow a few essentials from his bathroom.

  The photographs, on his bedside table and chest of drawers, of him with the cutest little curly-haired girl, holding ice creams outside a monkey enclosure at a zoo, took me by surprise. There weren’t any photographs downstairs, and the couple of times I’d met Henry Halliday he hadn’t given the impression of being a monkeying around, ice cream-buying, favourite uncle kind of man. He looked younger and surprisingly dishy in casual clothes – they suited him far better than the stuffy suits I’d only ever seen him in.

  I carried on to the en-suite bathroom. Catching sight of myself in the mirror as I squeezed a small blob of toothpaste onto my finger, my puffy eyes gleamed back at me. The red rims made their usual blue-green even greener. My dark chestnut hair, that slinky, sleek bob I’d had done for the wedding and had kept because Alex liked it, looked like a birds’ nest. No wonder Talisker had slept on my chest. He’d probably been waiting for a bird to pop out of there.

  It was highly unlikely Henry Halliday would possess any hair smoothing products. He wouldn’t need anything like that, with his hair almost militarily short. He was clearly a fan of L’Occitane toiletries, though. Very nice. But he didn’t seem to have any conditioner, so hair-washing would have to wait until tomorrow. A comb-through with wet fingers would have to do for today. I left the shampoo alone and just took his citrus verbena shower gel with me, feeling like a thief. This was expensive stuff. I really would only use a tiny bit and tomorrow I’d make sure to have my usual Frizz Ease and Body Shop bits and pieces with me.

  After looking as far up and down the little street as I could, from the front door’s spy-hole, to make sure there was nobody about, I took the back door key from its hook and nipped outside, locking the door and tiptoeing down the side of the cottage, all as silently as possible, feeling like a criminal about to get caught. It was a relief to get into the car uncontested and drive away.

  Davina’s vermilion red BMW was already parked in the space nearest the office. I don’t know how she always managed to get that space, whatever time of day she came and went.

  I eased Harriet, my little Honda, into a spot further away, between an Oops-a-Daisy delivery van and three pizza delivery motorbikes. Time to go and dazzle Davina into rehiring me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘So, you’re not jetting off to Dubai after all?’ Davina cooed, clapping her slender hands together as if I’d just told her we’d communally won the lottery. Anyone else might have questioned my story about us deciding at the last minute that it would be better if I stayed put in good ol’ Blighty for now and carried on working while my husband went to Dubai alone and sorted out somewhere for us to live. It suited her that I was staying and that was all that mattered. Davina was all about the business.

  ‘Yes,’ I breathed, thanking God for Davina being so, well … Davina. ‘That’s right, so if it’s all right …’

  ‘Katya can reschedule your regular clients as soon as she gets in. And we can lose that silly girl, whatever her name is.’ She tapped her hot pink nails on her desk. ‘Honestly, if she can’t keep hold of a tiny little poodle, I can’t imagine what use she thought she’d be to me.’ Davina rolled her perfectly made-up eyes. ‘You’d better call Mrs. Parker and tell her you’ll be back walking Bubbles from today.’

  ‘I’ll call her now …’

  ‘What a good thing I didn’t let Henry Halliday know you were thinking of leaving us. You know what a stick-in-the-mud he is about having people he doesn’t know in his home.’ Davina treated me to one of her dazzlingly white-toothed smiles, her glossy lipstick, as always, matching her nail polish. ‘It’s almost as if I knew you wouldn’t really toddle off and leave me in the lurch.’

  A grin spread across my face as I made myself a large mug of tea and took an even larger handful of biscuits from the tin. My job back with no questions and biscuits for breakfast. This day was already about a million percent better than yesterday. Yesterday – that wiped the stupid grin straight back off again. All I’d done was get my job back. The time for grinning would be when Alex stopped arsing about and called me with the mother of all grovelling apologies and I’d told him to get stuffed. Either that or when I’d saved up enough for the air fare and gone out to Dubai and found a high enough balcony to push him off – I gathered they had quite a lot of those over there.

  Katya wasn’t in yet, so I sat at her desk to phone Mrs. Parker. But while nobody else was in the outer office to see me, I logged into my email account, wishing I’d let Alex have his own way and buy me the latest smart phone for my birthday so I could do this in private. I must be the last person under the age of a hundred and five in the whole phone-owning world with such an old mobile, but it worked perfectly and I liked it. Being low maintenance hadn’t done me any favours. That bottle of perfume I’d asked for instead seemed like a huge mistake now. It certainly hadn’t made me smell so nice my husband wanted to be on the same continent as me.

  There was nothing from him and I didn’t dare write anything to him just yet, as I was pretty sure anything I composed right now would get me arrested. While I still had the computer to myself I logged into my Facebook account too. No personal message. Just the usual crap. Half of me wanted to see Alex’s page. Would it still say Relationship Status – Married to Beth Dixon with the photo of us, all tanned and happy, petting Santorini donkeys on our honeymoon at the top of the page? I was half convinced that he’d arrive there and realise he’d just had a wobble. Well he could wobble right off for all I cared. Angry? Moi? My finger was still hovering over the mouse when I heard Davina coming towards her office door. I logged off and picked up the phone to call the owner of the disappearing dog.

  Far from a tiny little poodle, Bubbles was a large standard size, wilful as a stroppy teenager and surprisingly strong. The first time I took him out, he nearly yanked my arm out of its socket when he caught sight of an unfortunate cat in the distance. If that poor girl yesterday hadn’t been warned, then it really wasn’t her fault she’d briefly lost him. I’d try and talk Davina into giving her another chance.

  My first call of the day took me back to the Netley Villages. They were like the three bears of villages – Netley Magna being the big daddy bear, Netley Mallow, the medium sized mummy bear, and Netley Parva, where Talisker lived, the baby bear. Right now I was off to one of a pair of 1930s bungalows overlooking the duck pond in Netley Mallow, to visit Anthony and Cleopatra. Yes, seriously.

  Tony and Cleo, the names they actually answer to, are brother and sister, two beautiful ginger cats. I reckon I’d have called them Hudson and Mrs Bridges if they were mine – I bought Mum the fortieth anniversary DVD box set of the original Upstairs Downstairs after the new version came out. He has a white smudge on the front of his neck, like a little bow tie, and white back paws as if he’s wearing spats. She has a white belly and white smudges on her cheeks like she’s wearing an apron and has flour on her face. And if Cleopatra/Mrs Bridges had ever had kittens, I’d have kept a female one and called her Ruby – yes, fanciful I know. But, like Talisker, they’re regular customers and I’ve had time to get rather fond of them.

  I let myself into their bungalow. Anthony was stretched out on the arm of the sofa. He opened a lazy eye as I walked over to him, closed it again, and stretched himself even longer.

  ‘Hello, handsome,’ I dropped my bag on the ottoman and stood over him. ‘Where’s your sister?’

  Behind me, Cleopatra meowed as she pitter-pattered out of the bedroom, where I knew she liked the king size bed to herself.

  ‘I trust madam had a comfortable night?’ Kneeling down, I stroked her. She paused to lean her head into my hand for a moment before meowing at her brother, telling him, I imagine, to get up, which he did, stretching and yawning as he went. Both of them escorted me into the kitchen and watched to make sure they were getting the right flavour Fancy Feast, th
e right amount of biscuits, and that their water was changed properly. As they tucked into their breakfast, I ran myself a glass of water from the tap and went to sit on the ottoman.

  This could really work, I thought as I sat there, sipping my water. OK, the Steadmans, Tony and Cleo’s owners, had an erratic schedule, filming documentaries. They could go weeks without needing us and then call us at the last minute to feed their pets for two days. There were also times they needed us a couple of days a week for a month or so. But for the weeks when I couldn’t camp out at Henry Halliday’s cottage, this could definitely be somewhere I could spend the odd night.

  I entertained the cats, playing with a couple of their toy mice. Anthony joined in, dashing back and forth trying to catch them, while Cleopatra washed her face and watched us. Then I picked each of them up for a cuddle, tidied up their His and Hers litter trays, and headed off to my next call.

  Yes, I could definitely do this.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I can’t do this. It’s breaking the law. It’s like squatting. Maybe it even is squatting. Whatever it is, I just know I’m going to get caught and go to jail. I’m not clever enough to get away with it. Oh my God! What was I thinking!

  It was all right during the working day. It was so easy to bravely plan my victimless crime that it didn’t even feel like a crime. And it would be victimless. I wouldn’t be eating any of their food or running up their utility bills. I would literally be having the odd cup of tea, sleeping, and showering. All right, the showers would use some water and electricity, but I’d keep them as short as possible. And I could do something nice for each of the clients whose homes I borrowed, something they wouldn’t notice, like top up their pet food supplies or clean the kitchens of those who didn’t have cleaners or something.